Maximum PC

When I took programming one of the more cool things that I took was recursive functions. But I really didn't see the need for them to often.

How many of you guys/girls use recursive functions?

Recursive functions are awesome! BST's can be traversed much faster through the use of recursion. I odn't use recursion for everything, but I don't like to avoid it.

Lalalalalalalala laaaaa

longjump.

Recursion is a great tool to use ... but only when it is necessary.

Masochist.

Hehehe.

Amen! I can't code BST's without recursion, I don't even know how to iterate through a BST using standard loops! Recursion is my and your bestfriend.

I'm sorry but I don't know the reference to "longjump".

It's something used to make unrolling recursive functions more efficient when you eventually return.

Google recursion+longjump

Well, that you should be able to do w/o recursion - an easy version is a bst implementation using an array then just use a stack to simulate the recursion...

I once tried to write an iterative version of the towers of hanoi problem. OMG, Huge PITA! I had done the recursive version pretty easily and spent a good hour and a half on the iterative verson before calling it quits.

Recursion and Dynamic Programming - two fo the best friends a programmer can ever have....

While I could, using recursion is both fun and easier to visualize. Besides, do YOU want to visualize a BST in your head as a flat array? I know I wouldn't want that!

That said, I thought about coding ToH using standard iterative commands, but I gave up 5 minutes into it.

And yes, Recursion + Dynamic Programming = Programmer's Best Friends.

You guys keep forgeting how basic a bST array is..... you probably learned it early on in your first data structures class and then fogot all about.

Say our tree can have up to 100 positive intergers, right. Inititalize an integer array of 101 in size with everything filled to -1 (in a zero based language like java, c#, etc). Skip the index 0. The 'root node' is at index 1. A left child is 2*parent and a right child is 2*parent + 1. A child's parent is always child / 2.

Not so hard to visualize...

I have worked with Arrays in VB 5/6, Java, and C++. Now I have never been enrolled in a CS degree. My associates is in Microcomputers and Networking and am going for a Bachelors in CIS. But I have never heard BST once in any of my classes. So I did some research and it seems very interesting.

BST's are fun to code, I just didn't like using arrays for BST's, mainly because I never cared to visualize it, so I never got the hang of it, either that or I cut class or something.

That and the code is still much shorter and cleaner using a linked node implementation and recursion.

I tried to use recursion, but I kept repeating myself...

I use recursion all the time, but I thought that recursion was not actually more effecient than another type of loop, just easier to read. Is this true (I mean the 'fastest' implementations of each)?

It can be more efficient, and it can be drastically less efficient ... it really depends on how it is used.

For example, if a recursive method calls itself using a pass-by-copy (ie., it creates new instances of its members with each call), it can quickly eat up memory ... if it uses pass-by-reference, then this is not a problem.

As with all tools, it is important to use them wisely.

In general, recursion is going to be slower.

A few forms of recursion, such as tail recursion, are paticularly slow in comparison. Every recursive call results in all the local variables being pushed onto the stack and the creation of a new stack frame, which is very expensive if you were doing something simple.

Recursively (and quickly).....

True.

If the number of calls is large, it is slow in comparison.

What languages support tail recursion?
I know C++ doesn't.